Rencho often spoke to [Johon, a book merchant] earnestly and sincerely of his belief in The Lotus Sutra, explaining how the great teaching was not just an object of piety, something merely to be read with the eyes and understood with the mind. It was something to be read by the body, to be lived with all one’s flesh and blood; for it offered a courageous and compassionate pattern of living if one followed the examples and the vows of those divine beings who had heard the true teachings of Sakyamuni.